Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory

Question

Instructions

See Attatchment

CRJ 560

Criminological Theory

Theory PowerPoint Presentation Instructions

In this course, you will complete a presentation using PowerPoint with a voiceover, which will

allow you to demonstrate your grasp of theory and the applicability of theory to policy and future

research. The other purpose is for you to have the opportunity to engage with a theoretical

perspective of interest to you in more detail. Finally, this project serves to advance your research,

analytical, and writing skills. There are several components to this assignment. Address these

components in the order listed. I also provide a list of theories from which you must choose at

the end of this document. I restricted you to those theories because there is sufficient research to

permit you to complete the assignment. Quotes are restricted in your presentation. They should

only be something that is suitable to quote. Otherwise, paraphrasing is required so that I can be

sure that you understand the material. When explaining concepts or theoretical principles, you

MUST paraphrase for this reason. If you do not already have Office software, the Office of

Information Technology has made it available to students. "Students can go

to portal.office.com (Links to an external site.) to download and install the latest version of

Office. They should log in with their SJU email address and password. " 

Your audience is policymakers. Therefore, do not talk as if you are doing an informal

presentation to your instructor. You want to be formal in layout of the presentation and the style

in which you present. You are trying to convince policymakers to embrace your ideas.

Presentation

1. Title slide with the name of the theory and theorist(s), your name, and your affiliation

(i.e., the university name)

2. Outline slide (provide an outline of the presentation): The content here must match the

major headings used throughout the presentation. For instance, if you have more than one

slide for the introduction, keep the major heading as Introduction.” Do not add continued

to additional slides.

3. Introduction (Discuss in the order listed.):

a. Reiterate the name of the theory and the theorist(s). The information in this

section means that you must pick a single theory (not a theoretical school)

and that includes identifying the theorist(s). You cannot say that you focused

on control theory when there is more than one control theory. Whose control

theory is your focus, and what is the name of that theory?

b. Discuss the origins of the theory you chose (e.g., historical events, earlier

theories that influenced its development, and/or the background of the theorist(s)

that influenced its development).

4. Theoretical Provisions: Discuss the causal arguments/principles of the theory you chose

(i.e. what are the provisions used to explain crime?).

5. Theoretical Testing: Describe and analyze the empirical/scholarly/peer-reviewed studies

that researchers used to test the causal arguments of your theory, and discuss your

responses to the following questions. The bulk of your sources should be tests of your

chosen theory, such that they allow you to address this section. All of those sources

must be addressed in this section in a literature review format rather than a

discussion of each source individually. Discuss the content in the order listed.

a. What types of offenses did researchers testing your chosen theory examine?

b. What conclusions did the authors draw about the ability of your chosen theory to

explain, in whole or in part, the types of offenses examined? Specifically, did they

find the theory offered a viable explanation for the commission of these offenses,

or did they find the theory was ineffective in explaining the commission of these

offenses?

c. What was the basis of the conclusions that the researchers drew?

d. What limitations did the researchers note about their studies, and what did you

find to be limitations?

e. Based on your assessment of the studies testing your chosen theory, how valuable

do you find your chosen theory for explaining crime generally, a specific category

of crime (e.g., violent/personal) or a specific type of crime (e.g., terrorism,

robbery, murder, theft)?

6. Future Research:

a. Based on the points you raised in section five, what are general issues that you

believe future research needs to address?

b. Based on your assessment in section 5e, what offense(s) would you study if you

conducted a study testing this theory? You need to have a foundation for what you

propose to study, so you need to consider what you believe the theory is best at

explaining.

c. What would you hypothesize about the offense(s) given the provisions of your

chosen theory? Remember that a hypothesis is a predictive statement (not

question) about the relationship between two or more phenomena. For instance,

one might hypothesize that men are more likely to commit robbery than women.

The predicted relationship is between gender and committing robbery.

7. Conclusion: Summarize the main points of your presentation and then discuss at least

one policy recommendation that you would advocate to address the offense(s) you

discussed in section 5e. Remember that you must ground the recommendation(s) in the

provisions of your chosen theory, so indicate the link.

8. References: You must provide references in APA format. Use the Hacker and Sommers

book 8 th edition 2020 Update for the 7 th edition of APA. See pages 113-139. Be sure to

cite images that you do not own.

In presenting, you want to make sure that you are not reading from the slide without elaborating

on points when you do your voiceover for the presentation, as the audience can read the slide.

The audience wants details. That is where your narration arises. Do not try to put everything into

the slide. Put information on the slide that provides context for the points you will address. Test

the font clarity by putting the presentation into slideshow and step back from the monitor about

six feet to see how readable your text is.

You need to use a minimum of eight sources. Preferably, all of the sources should involve a

test of your chosen theory, but at minimum, six of the sources must be a test of the theory.

If you cannot find that many sources for your presentation that meet that requirement,

then you need to pick a new theory that allows you to meet this requirement. You should

obtain academic research articles like those assigned for the course and if the theorists wrote a

book solely on the theory, you can use that book in your research [e.g. Travis Hirschi’s Causes of

Crime; Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld’s Crime and the American Dream; John

Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming]. No textbook is an acceptable source. All in-text

citations and reference list citations, as usual must be in APA format. You can put in-text

citations in as part of the script that you put in the notes area of PowerPoint. Use the library

website to find appropriate sources. Sources must be from 2008-the present unless a source

is a landmark document (e.g., original source where the theory was introduced) or I

approve your use of the source. Check with me if you are unsure about whether you have a

landmark source.

You can submit the presentation a maximum of three days after the due date, but expect

that to lower your score. If you submit it more than three days after the due date, you will

receive a 0 for this assignment.

DOs and DONTs

1. Choose a font type that is readable; cursive fonts are difficult to read so avoid them.

Usually PowerPoint templates provide font types that they think are suitable for the slide.

2. Choose a font size for the slide titles that is not too large or too small. Some

recommendations are to have title sizes on slides between 36-44 points.

3. Choose a font size for the body of slides, the title slide, and the references slide that

are not too large or too small. You want to strive for no larger than 32-point font and no

smaller than 24-point font for the body of the slides. If you cite sources on the slide rather

than in the notes section, you can use between 18-20 point fonts, since that is not the

information you want the audience to focus on during the presentation. The same 18-20

point font restriction applies to the references slide(s). You want to use appropriate font

size on your title slide too so that the information does not overwhelm the slide, but also

so it is not too small.

4. Amount of text on a slide: You want to have no more than six lines per slide, but you

should strive for between 2-3 important lines of information. You are to elaborate on

content in your narration. Put a space between bullet points. Do not overwhelm slides

with sentences or paragraphs. You want to avoid cluttering a slide.

5. Background and text colors: Avoid using distracting background colors for slides and

ensure that your text color contrast enough with the background color that the audience

can read it. If you wish to use color to emphasize important words, pick one color and

stick with it.

6. Use of photographic images or clip art: It is not required that you use any images,

including clip art, but you may find that such material enhances the audience’s

understanding of your ideas. Any clip art or photographic images you choose to use

should be professional in appearance. Do not overwhelm your slides with photos or clip

art. They are only to be used strategically. You also want to avoid having more than one

photo or clip art per slide, as you want it to enhance the presentation rather than distract

the audience’s attention. You must cite any photographic images that you do not own.

7. Use of animations: If you choose to use animations in your slides, do so sparingly and

choose a consistent animation scheme.

8. Slide numbers: You need to number each of your slides.

Theory Options for Research Presentation

1. Cornish and Clarke’s Rational Choice Theory

2. Cohen and Felson’s Routine Activities Theory

3. Sampson’s Collective Efficacy Theory

4. Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory

5. Agnew’s General Strain Theory

6. Messner and Rosenfeld’s Institutional Anomie Theory

7. Anderson’s Code of the Streets Theory

8. Akers’ Social Learning Theory

9. Hirschi’s Social Control Theory (aka Social Bond Theory)

10. Sykes and Matza’s Neutralization Theory

11. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s Self Control Theory (aka General Theory of Crime)

12. Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory